My Alien Friend
Tolan delivers a masterclass
Hey there, it’s Jacob at Retention.Blog 👋
I got tired of reading high-level strategy articles, so I started writing actionable advice I would want to read.
Every week I share practical learnings you can apply to your business.
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Last week I saw a post on LinkedIn about Tolan’s paywall:
If you don’t know, Tolan is in the “self care pet” category, but has an extremely unique take with your “self care pet” being an alien from another world, and the app has established a connection to another world.
They’ve had some big spikes, and have done close to $800k in the last 30 days.
But if you notice on the paywall, they’re sending users in the US to Apple Pay. So I suspect there is even higher revenue.
Data courtesy of Appfigures
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This is a screenshot from Tolan a little over a year ago
Pretty amazing progress in terms of their design. Unfortunately, I don’t have screenshots from the rest of the app, but you can imagine how basic it was not very long ago.
When I explored the app again this week, I was blown away by how much progress they’ve made.
Firstly, when I opened the app again, they triggered “What’s new” cards to show me and get me excited about the progress they’ve made.
If you’re improving your app, make sure people know about it!
Tolan has an amazingly rich animated video onboarding now.
It’s worth downloading the app and going through the experience yourself.
It may cause you to rethink some interaction patterns of what’s possible today.
Don’t want to download and want to watch a full video of my experience? here you go. It’s 9 minutes. But seriously check it out because you can’t hear my voice and the full experience.
First, you start with talking to the “Oracle” who asks you questions for voice prompts, and you speak back to the app.
It records your answers and responds.
You’re having a real conversation with their AI
Then you have a bit of back and forth:
“What are your goals?”
“What could you talk about endlessly?”
and a few more questions.
The experience is extremely smooth and the responses fast.
Check out their whitepaper on how they build this super low latency experience: https://openai.com/index/tolan/
These questions are similar to what standard quiz onboarding flow could use, but the investment is so much higher because you feel like you’re actually having a conversation!
If you’ve never talked with an LLM agent over voice before, it’s a bit odd, but you get used to it.
After you’ve shared some answers, they don’t forget ASO best practices. Ask for a review during onboarding to maximize rating velocity. The ratio of new installs to ratings is an important factor for ASO.
Use tactics that are proven to work, but make it your own!
Tolan uses the “hold to commit” UX popularized by big apps like Headway and Flo, but puts their own twist on it.
Instead of the “commitment prompt” angle, they use it to unlock your Tolan friend. As you’ll see, it is strategically placed before a paywall.
Yes, I’m very creative, I named my Tolan, “Tol Tol”.
Additional investment and personalization to make it feel like my own.
Paywall time!!
So before you actually get to interact and talk with your Tolan, they built some anticipation, and try to convince you to upgrade.
Does this multi page paywall flow look kinda familiar?
It’s similar to a Duolingo paywall flow, but again, they made it their own.
Take inspiration, but you don’t always need to copy exactly.
And here is the actual paywall:
They default to monthly! (and an expensive monthly)
Multiple social proof elements
And most importantly, Apple Pay!
It’s also not a web view, it’s actually Apple pay in-app. I still thought this wasn’t allowed?
They do have both Subscribe through App Store, and Apple pay options. To my understanding, this is a requirement for offering external payment methods.
And here, you can see the annual option as well.
I wonder if it’s a test defaulting to monthly?
I could see the ARPU being higher with that high a monthly plan, even if they do have high churn. If you get ~3-4 monthly renewals, that’s pretty darn good. And will likely have a higher conversion rate than annual.
And a higher initial conversion rate means more purchase signals to send back to the ad networks.
And they don’t have a trial on monthly! Which means it’s high quality signals, not trial starts.
Something to think about.
If I don’t convert initially, they have a discounted offer.
But it’s actually a different tier!
The have Tolan Lite here, and previously, it was Tolan Plus
It seems like the main difference is 10x chat time vs 30x chat time. So token costs.
And I believe Apple has started blocking showing discounts on the safe offer immediately after the first paywall.
But this is not the same offer, this is a different tier, and so this should be 100% okay.
It’s essentially the exact same thing as a discount offer, but abides by Apple rules.
The level of detail in the early experience is amazing.
I can chat with my Tolan.
I enter into a little house, and then some TV show starts playing on a screen in my house. I have no idea whats happening, but somehow it’s extremely engaging.
Then they do something I love:
Invite a friend!
Obviously, not a new tactic, but rewarded invites are great, and it’s low cost to them (not actual money, just tokens).
Always try to get more free users that you don’t have to pay for via referrals, WOM, etc.
Tolan has so much more to talk about deeper in the app, but the last thing I’ll mention here is their other IAPs:
Users may easily run out of credits if you talk to your Tolan a lot, so don’t miss out on an opportunity to monetize your free users if they hit limits.
With AI powered apps, this is important. You can give away stuff for free, don’t give away too much!
Okay, now the actual last thing!
Motivate users to do important actions and reward them!
Tolan knows scheduling a check-in dramatically improves the likelihood of user coming back.
Motivate them to complete this action with tokens!
They’ve established an in-game currency, that you can buy, or they can reward you with. This is typically a more advanced monetization strategy, but Tolan has pretty large ambitions.
They’re setting themselves up for even more growth in the future.
You need to go check out Tolan. You’re going to be impressed.
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